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SOCIETY OF SONS OF THE REVOLUTION. 






GENERAL SOCIETY. 



At the Regular Triennial Meeting of the G-eneral 
Society of Sons of the Revolution, held in the City of 
New York, on Wednesday, the nineteenth day of April, 
A. D. 1893, there was received a communication from 
the Society of Sons of the Revolution in the State of 
Maryland, embodying the Report made to it by its 
Delegates to the Special Meeting of the G-eneral Society 
held February sixteenth, A. D. 1893, to consider the 
question of a propesed union of the Societies of Sons of 
the Revolution and of Sons of the Americaji Revolution. 

On Motion, it was Ordered that the said Report be 
placed upon the files of the General Society and be by 



each of said State Societies, and also the credentials and applications 
upon which each of said members was so admitted ; and be it 
further 

*' * Resolved, That said Committee shall examine said credentials 
and applications, and shall erase from the list of membership in 
each of said Societies the name of any member, by whose creden- 
tials and application it would appear that he was not entitled to 
membership under the requirements of Article Third of said Con- 
stitution ; and be it further 

" 'Resolved, That a list of members so revised by such Committee 
shall be certified to the General Presidents of the Society of Sons 
of the Revolution and of the Sons of the American Revolution, 
and that upon the receipt thereof, such General Presidents shall 
call a Joint Meeting of both General Societies for the adoption of 
said Constitution and the election of Officers thereunder ; at which 
meeting each State Society shall be entitled to representation accord- 
ing to the provisions of Article Seven of said Constitution, but 
upon the actual basis of membership so certified by said Committee 
to said General Presidents ; and be it further 

" 'Resolved, That said Constitution, if approved at such meeting, 
together with the proceedings of this Conference or meeting, shall 
be submitted for final ratification to the various State Societies ; 
and be it further 

" 'Resolved, That this meeting do now adjourn to meet upon the 
call of the General Presidents, as herein provided/ 

" In a short time a Committee of the Society of the Sons of the 
American Revolution, headed by General Horace Porter, the 
President of that association, appeared before the meeting and 
stated that the action of the Society of Sons of the Revolution, set 
out in the Recitals and Resolutions just quoted, was ' disapproved ' 
by the Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, and further 
intimated that such action was not in strict accord with the Reso- 
lutions adopted at an earlier hour, inasmuch as having by such 
earlier Resolutions, ' adopted the Report of the Conference Com- 
mittee,' one of the recommendations of which provided for an 
immediate joint meeting of the two Societies, the adoption of the 
new Constitution and election of Officers, it was now incompetent 

(4) 



for the Society of Sons of the Revolution to depart in any par- 
ticular from the programme thus prescribed, 

'* In reply to this statement a Member called the attention of the 
Committee to the fact that the Resolution referred to did not, in 
terms or by implication, adopt the said Report or commit the Society 
of Sons of the Revolution to any such further proceedings as was 
claimed. 

" General Porter accepted the issue thus presented, but upon read- 
ing the original of said Resolutions, then in his own possession, was 
constrained to admit that the Society of the Sons of the American 
Revolution ' had construed them to have a broader meaning than 
upoh careful reading they seemed to justify.' 

" The Society of Sons of the Revolution appointed, on the spot, 
a Special Committee to confer further with that headed by General 
Porter, in the effort to reach an agreement under which somefwm 
of a Committee on Credentials might be appointed, but it was 
found impossible to obtain the assent of the Sister Society to any 
form of such Committee or to any plan by which the matter of 
eligibility of members could in any manner be enquired into or 
certified; indeed that Society adjourned sine die before its Committee 
finally waited upon our Society and communicated its refusal to 
entertain any proposition looking to such enquiry and certification. 

" Just here is now the issue between the two Societies : Certain 
Members of that of the Sons of the American Revolution contend, 
in the public press and elsewhere, that the failure of the proposed 
union is chargeable to several causes, each one of which however 
they claim to constitute fault on the part of the Society of Sons of 
the Revolution ', for instance they allege, 

(1) " That such failure was due to the ' bad faith ' of the Society 
of Sons of the Revolution, in that having adopted the Report of 
the Conference Committee and the proposed Constitution, they 
then sought to evade the consequences of such action by the inter- 
position of a new and ' insulting ' prerequisite : It is apparent that 
this position is untenable, since it plainly appears from the Resolu- 
tions adopted unchanged by both Societies, that neither said Report 
nor Constitution were ever adopted by either Society, as was admit- 
ted by General Porter and his Committee, and as, in the case of 

(5) 



the proposed Cowstitution, was manifestly impossible, for the reason 
that its adoption oould be had, not by either Society alone, but only 
by the two when they should have united in joint session, and this 
is in fact the ])recise mode prescribed for such adoption by the 
second paragraph of the fourth recommendation of the Committee 
of Conference. 

" That a proposition to submit the credentials of each member 
of every Society to the examination of a Committee constituted by 
ttie Societies themselves, should be characterized as ' insulting ' is 
explicable u'[)on no theory other than that of apprehension of the 
results of such scrutiny and if so founded does grave injustice to 
some, if not to many, of the State Societies of the Sons of the 
American Revolution, to which, as we l^elieve to be the case in our 
own State, such examination would be as welcome as to our own. 

(2) "Again it is said the Society of Sons of the Revolution 
' prevented the union ' by failing to hold firmly the requirements 
of lineal descent and by inserting in the proposed Constitution 
a provision in favor of collaterals, in certain instances : 

" To this proposition it seems unnecessary to make further reply 
than merely to note that the proposed Constitution was prepared 
by a Joint Committee of both Societies and that, although not 
adopted by either of the General Societies, it was recommended 
by both in identically the same language ; but it is submitted that 
the provision in the proposed Constitution relating to the admission 
of Collaterals is so carefully circuiiiscribed as to present small 
danger of abuse and to render it objectionable in but moderate 
degree. 

(3) " Another charge and one upon which much argument is 
expended, is to the effect that the proposition for a Committee on 
Credentials Vras fatal to union, since it sought to deprive the State 
Societies of the exclusive right to judge of the qualifications of 
membei'8 and vested that authority in 'a central body.' 

" Whatever force might have attached to this objection had the 
State Societies been deprived of their individual rights after the 
adoption of a new Constitution, it scarcely applied to the then 
existing circumstances : The question was not how shall persons be 
admitted to membership under the new Constitution, but how shall 

(6) 



such new Constitution come into effectual existence ? Certainly, it 
could be created only by the act of persons who were qualified 
to form the new Association under the requirements prescribed 
by it. Unquestionably, no State Society had ever measured its 
members by this standard, [and it is equally indisputable that under 
the Constitutions of the existing Societies there was no tribunal 
competent to ascertain, not whether individuals were qualified to 
retain the membership they already held, but whether they were 
also possessed of those qualifications which were, by the proposed 
Constitution, made essential to the formation of a new Society 
under its provisions. And it is to be noted that the proposed 
Constitution, recommended by both Societies, while it provided in 
its Third and Fifth Articles for the original jurisdiction of the 
State Societies, had also reserved to the General Society a power to 
entertain and determine all questions affecting the qualification for 
membership in any State Society, upon their proper presentation. 
(Article 8.) 

" The position of the Sons of the Revolution, on the other hand, 
is simply this : — When assembled in session of their General Society 
on February 16th, 1893, they received the Report of the Joint 
Committee of Conference ; adopted a Resolution to the effect that 
they were in favor of a union of the two Societies ; and another 
recommendation that the proposed form of Constitution be adopted. 

" Ascertaining that this action had met the approval of their 
Sister Society, by the adoption by it of said Resolution 'totidem 
verbis/ they proceeded to provide for the formation of a Com- 
mittee on Credentials to which should be submitted the qualifica- 
tions, under such proposed Constitution, of all who should claim a 
voice in its adoption and effectuation. 

"The necessity and propriety of such safeguard are equally 
apparent and no better guarantee of absolute good faith could have 
been devised than the provision that their own membership, as 
well as that of the Sister Society, should be submitted to a Com- 
mittee created by both, upon which each should have equal 
representation, and by the certification of which all should alike 
stand or fall. 

(7) 



0.J. 



" In conclusiou, the Delegation reported that throughout all the 
debates of this most important meeting of the General Society, the 
Delegates from the Society of Sons of the Revolution in the State 
of Maryland had with unswerving fidelity adhered to the proposi- 
tion that while clothed with authority to surrender the Charter of 
the Association which they represented, to a Society to be formed 
of " Sons of the Bevoluiion,^' according to the standard prescribed 
by the proposed Constitution, they had yet deemed themselves 
bound in honor to report to this Society that they had so sur- 
rendered it to a new Society composed of persons demonstrcded to 
be so qualified to bear that title, or to return that Charter to those 
who had entrusted its care to them, for the want of such demonstra- 
tion of qualification. 

"And the Delegates asked that, having fully reported their 
action in the premises, their discharge of the trust confided to 
them receive the approval or the condemnation of this Society, 
according to its estimate of the fidelity with which the duties had 
been performed. 

"Dr. William Lee stated that he deemed it most fitting that, as 
a Member of the Maryland Society of the Sons of the American 
Revolution, as well as of this Society, he should move, as he did 
with great pleasure, that the thanks of this Society be extended 
to the Delegates who had just reported, for the wholly satisfactory 
manner in which they had discharged the duties of the office with 
which they had been clothed ; 

" And further, that this Society does now formally approve and 
endorse the action of its Delegates at the meeting of the General 
Society of Sons of the Revolution, held in New York City upon 
February 16th, 1893, and the action of the said General Society 
upon said date. 

" These Resolutions were greeted with applause and, being put 
to the vote, were unanimously adopted." 

By Order, 

ROBT. RIDDELL BROWN, 

Secretari/. 

Baltimore, April 5th, 1893. 

(8) 



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